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Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.

Max Eastman

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Max Eastman
Age: 86 †
Born: 1883
Born: January 4
Died: 1969
Died: March 25
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Opinion Journalist
Peace Activist
Poet
Suffragist
Writer
Canandaigua
New York
Max Forrester Eastman
Playfully
Instinct
Laughter
Taking
Humor
Challenges
Pain

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The real guarantee of freedom is an equilibrium of social forces in conflict, not the triumph of any one force.
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Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.
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A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.
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There is truth in the high opinion that in so far as a man conforms, he ceases to exist.
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Humor is a kind of emotional chaos told about calmly and quietly in retrospect.There is always a laugh in the utterly familiar.
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Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind
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Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.
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Living well is the best revenge.If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.
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It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.
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A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke
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Patriotism is one of the unalterable facts of man's nature. It is a virtue if you like it, and a vice if you don't like it.
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A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything.
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